She has long been regarded as one of the few women who has managed to juggle ‘having it all’ .

But Natalie Massenet has now revealed how hard it was to launch her successful online fashion business when she was pregnant with her first child.

Natalie Massenet is considered one of the few woman to have been able to have it all. Pictured with Caroline Rush (R) CEO of BFC and Samantha Cameron

The 47-year-old entrepreneur, named as one of the world’s most influential women in February, created her online fashion empire Net-a-porter more than a decade ago, when shopping via a keyboard was in its infancy.

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Net-a-Porter was reported to be worth £350 million two years ago.

Speaking at the Vogue Fashion Festival at the weekend, Mrs Massenet, who at the time was pregnant with Isabella, now 13, said: ‘At the same time when I started writing the business plan I was also pregnant. And I think fuelled by hormones and delusions that if I could build a baby why not a business?

Massenet is now one of the most successful businesswomen in Britain. With editor, Dylan Jones and Prime Minister David Cameron

The businesswoman said that even now she has to pinch herself. With Kate Reardon and Lisa BLaunch at party for Vanity Fair's 'On Couture'

‘I made a dreadful mistake or opportunity I’m not sure, of doing both of them at the same time, and it was enormously hard. Actually having a business that I loved and a baby that I loved at the same time kept me enormously balanced.’

She joked: ‘I was so traumatised by having a baby and starting a business in the same year that it took six years for the next one to come along'.

Following the success of her website Massenet now hobnobs with the rich and powerful, such as Victoria Beckham

Mrs Massenet, who is divorced from her French investment banker husband Arnaud Massenet, gave birth to another girl, Ava, and she jokes that she was ‘building the Net a Porter future consumer base one at a time.’

Mrs Massenet began her business with a team of 15 from an apartment in Chelsea, London. They worked from one bedroom and used the spare as a distribution centre, taking orders via a nineties laptop connected to dial-up internet.

Today 5 million people visit the site’s weekly magazine and 2,600 people are employed. Mrs Massenet has offices in the UK, US and Hong Kong.

She said she still has to ‘pinch herself’ every now and again.

‘While we were in this little rickety apartment in Chelsea and while we had all of our stuff stacked in the back and only 15 people in the room we put all of our energy to what the consumer saw and aimed big, wanted to make people think this was a big company,’ she said.

‘There is no recipe for success, it’s as unique and individual as you are,’ she added. ‘People always ask is it hard being an entrepreneur and a mum and the answer is yes.

'But the reality is women do it all the time and thankfully we have mentors and women around us who can inspire us.’